“Viva la revolucion!” An incongruous idea, perhaps, amid the Swiss lakes and mountains, let alone Lucerne’s ever-shiny music festival. But there we go: revolution, or its musical history, is the event’s “theme” for its 75th birthday year.

A concert curated and conducted by Oliver Knussen has as much interest as a new piece by this most reclusive and original of British composers. And Prom 26 – whose works he seems to have chosen because they reflect a fastidious control of detail equal to his own – allowed things which are not normally juxtaposed to shed fresh light on each other.

Back in London for the first time in 30 years, Boston Ballet look fresh, fast and strong. Balanchine’s Serenade, the first work on the company’s opening night, is both lyrical and democratic, full of moments when a corps dancer will stand out from the crowd. In the Boston performance, you notice a strong turn, a soaring jump. It’s like sunshine on water, a sparkle that lights up the dance without breaking its flow.

This is an unusual juxtaposition of seemingly incongruent composers, not least because of their contrasting attitudes to piano music – such an integral aspect of Beethoven's work, virtually an afterthought for Stravinsky, despite the instrument's centrality to his compositional process.

With performances of Apollon musagète and Oedipus Rex, John Eliot Gardiner has chosen to celebrate his seventieth birthday with two masterpieces from Stravinsky’s neo-classical period which could not be more different.

The most powerful weapon in the opera designer’s armoury is lighting, which allows musical atmosphere to be changed by the flick of a switch: Ravel’s ‘L’enfant et les sortileges’ was never more resonant than when lit by David Hockney’s glowing reds, greens, and mauves.